Rwp02-Suggestions for Registry Requirements

[Wil O'Mullane]

> 2. International language support
> 
> Can VO permit users to submit queries in Chinese or Russian? How these
> queries are transformed and executed taking advantage of VO Registry?
> 
Having some knowledge in this area allow me to comment.
At the simplest level this appears fine you pass a Language= or l= param on all requests. Ideally all servers would then hold this in a session variable so subsequent requests in the session know their language (plus all links returned need to carry the parameter with them). 
The iso codes for langauges are the obvious choice for the values of this parameter.
If a server does not support a language it returns its default.

Now inside the servers however we need tables which have translations for all words which may be translated this may be all UCDs what about units and all other words. The server then needs to substitute the translations based on the code passed in the request. In this case it is better of the server works in terms of ID numbers rather than actual words and returns the defeult (english?) when the apropriate translation is not available. 
This is to say you have to write your servers in a very different manner when it is truly multilingual.

In short this is a major undertaking if it is to be a "requiremrnt" of IVO then it should be considered from the very outset . 
having implemented a single dynamic site in multiple languages I worry it will suck in a lot of resources to do a distributed multilingual set of VO services.

Of course an alternative would be the babel fish aporch of provideing tranlation services which we pass our reults through.
 

wil